Hello, AltLaw users! Ever wanted to be able to link directly to a citation, without looking up the case first? Now you can! Use this address:

http://altlaw.org/cite/citation

Where citation can be any citation format that AltLaw's search engine recognizes. At the moment, that's F.3d, F.2d, U.S., and U.S.C.. Here are some examples:

http://altlaw.org/cite/893 F.2d 1104

http://altlaw.org/cite/17 U.S.C. 107

If you're a programmer and you want to generate these addresses from your application, remember to URL-encode spaces as %20.

We're happy to announce a new feature to help make AltLaw even better for quick legal research: copy-and-paste Bluebook citations.

Just click the "Show full citation" link to the right of the case title to get a complete, Bluebook-style citation with title, year, and court. The citation will appear already selected, so you can immediately copy (Ctrl+C) and paste (Ctrl+V) it into your word processor. Here's an example.

These citations are not always perfect, since we don't have staff to check them. Case titles, in particular, may be incorrectly abbreviated. We recommend checking with the Bluebook or another legal reference before publication.

After our latest update, AltLaw has a new feature. Each case (before 2006 or so) now has sidebars showing which other cases it cites or is cited by. Take a look at a well-known case for an example.

Soon this feature will be applied to newer cases as well.

We will be performing maintenance and upgrades on AltLaw this Friday, April 25, between noon and 6:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. The site may be unavailable for part of this time. When we come back online, new features!

Thanks to the excellent work of public.resource.org, AltLaw now has all Circuit Appeals court decisions, with federal reporter citations, from 1950 to 2007. This brings the total number of cases in the AltLaw database to over 700,000! More details on the coverage page.

Are you searching AltLaw with Mozilla Firefox or Internet Explorer 7? Now you can use AltLaw's search directly from the search toolbar in your web browser! Go to this page: Add AltLaw Search Toolbar.

We have made some adjustments to the way the AltLaw search engine works. There are now three search options:

1. The simple search at the top of every page now checks case titles first. This should make it easier to find well-known cases such as Baker v. Selden.

2. The new boolean search offers power users the ability to construct their own queries using boolean operators.

3. The advanced search remains the same.

Also, All searches now default to sorting by relevance rather than by date. You can still choose to sort by date by clicking the link at the top of the search results.

Unfortunately, some of the recently-introduced Atom feed links were broken by this change; you can get the updated link by doing a new search.

New feature: AltLaw now offers Atom feeds of updated search results.

Not sure what this means? Basically, a feed is a simple way to "subscribe" to a web page — in AltLaw's case, search results — and get a summary of new content that appears on that page. You need software called a "feed reader" to view the updates. Check out Feeds 101 at Google for more information.

To get the customized feed for your search, just click on the "ATOM 1.0 feed" link on the search results page.

How often are these feeds updated? It depends on the courts. Generally speaking, AltLaw will have a new case within 24 hours of the time it appears on a court's web site.

Just in time for the holidays, AltLaw is back on-line, with a new look and a boatload of new cases:

• Every U.S. Supreme Court case going back to 1759, courtesy of Justia.com.

• All published Federal Appeals Court cases going back to about 1970

This brings the total number of cases in AltLaw's database to over 350,000. We believe this is the largest free collection of case law on the web.

With these additions, it is now possible to search for cases by their reporter citation. Just type a citation, like 33 U.S. 591 or 49 F.3d 807, into the search box to go directly to that case. Citations are still not available for recent cases (in the last 10 years or so).

As always, if you have any comments, questions, or bug reports, you can contact us.

AltLaw.org will shut down for necessary maintenance and software upgrades on Friday, December 14, between noon and 6:00 p.m., Eastern Standard Time. The site will be inaccessible during this time. We apologize for any inconvenience.